Red Top

Life is not homogenous and this is a tough call when you are trying to be all-embracing. When I look out on a Sunday morning I can see a wave of very similar people or I can understand a group of vastly different people. I can assume that the opinions of a vocal minority are the opnions of most or worst of all that because they are so vocal they must somehow be unrepresentative altogether.

I do not see one social strata, one level of education, one age, one race, one orientation, one birthplace, one marital status - you name it there is a variety of it. Sure some things are more mixed up that others but if you try to reduce us to the lowest common denominator then there is very little there - as you discard each difference and leave yourself with some impossibly unrooted humanity - some heartless middle which is in fact nowhere at all.

The reality of diversity is rarely agreement it seems to me - the reality of surviving in diversity is confidence. If I am happy with myself then who you are really does not threaten me unless, of course you are unhappy with who you are and then you might think that forcibly changing my mind will somehow improve your position. But in this sea of the church the reality of diversity is not confidence in ourselves but confidence in God. Confidence not in our own abilities and strengths but confidence that there is something beyond them - someone who holds us and loves us and wants all of us the way we are made with all our colors and likes and dislikes and everything else.

The reality of diversity is being willing to step back from our own need for self-assertion and this is a difficult line to draw in a hierarchical church. Of course, we want to keep somethings the way they are, we want our rules and regulations, we want our clergy, we want our sacredness but at the same time we cannot own them and strangle all the holiness out of them by clinging to them too tightly. We have to acknowledge that they are God's.

When I was growing up the red foil top on the milk bottle meant that the milk was homogenized, that all the cream had been vigorously shaken up and mixed in with the milk. We had silver top, plain old whole milk with a band of cream collected at the top of the bottle (which we happily drained off if we could). Neither is a good picture for the body of Christ - if you shake us up to mix us and make us look all the same you will break us. But we do not want to be stratified either.

This battle between self and institution is one which is hard to resolve. The battle between institution and self is deadly as self so often acts as poison as it tries to assert more and more power. But this is not about power, it is about trust. This is not about the me who I want to put forward, it is about the me who God made.